As some allready know WOTC has been showing off upcomming product.
The first is a new AL storyline which ties into Tomb of Horrors. Acererak is back and stealing resurrection magic. Causing people who've been raised to wither and die. Looks like will be based in Chult so Druids rejoice you can now nab those hard to acquire dino forms! Also seems that its using Isle of Dread as a idea as the dino island you end up on is mapped only along the edge.
Looks to be a multi-media event. Adventurers League, Gazeteer, a module. Wiz-Kids minis pack and a board game like the previous Castle Ravenloft.
Theres also a dice tin thats embossed with the Green Man? But... does it glow???
(http://www.enworld.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=84801&d=1496445635)
Xanathar's Guide looks to be the long suspected pending compilation of UA articles.
Aaaand lastly Avalon Hill is doing a retheme of Betrayal at House on the Hill to... Betrayal at Baldurs Gate.
Very busy!
I know it is fashonable to shit on WoTC but this sounds awesome to me.
Looks interesting to me, as well. I think that many of the hardback module settings have seemed like retreads (Ravenloft again, giants again) but I can't recall old school dino settings. Could be a lot of fun. :-D
Isle of Dread may have been an inspiration.
Quote from: finarvyn;966423Looks interesting to me, as well. I think that many of the hardback module settings have seemed like retreads (Ravenloft again, giants again) but I can't recall old school dino settings. Could be a lot of fun. :-D
Sounds like it may be a minor retread somewhere in there of Isle of Dread. But I suspect its just a followthrough of Chult's dino theme?
(http://www.enworld.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=84866&stc=1)
Looks like a nice product. I applaud the mix of nostalgia/new direction. Won't be buying it, but I hope it fares well.
Please, please. please let Tomb of Annihilation be as fucking awesome as it sounds and not just another typical overwritten, written-to-be-read-and-not-played, modern big-company module.
Damnit, I really had intended on toning down my purchasing for the year. :D
How many are going to buy the dice set just for the Green Devil Face box?
Supposedly the minis are going to be some of the Classic Tomb things, like the 4-armed gargoyle and the rolling juggernaut.
Awesome, but that means when Acererak made his new lair in Chult he decided to use all the same traps and creatures from the old one? Or maybe the minis are for the boardgame?
Quote from: CRKrueger;966593How many are going to buy the dice set just for the Green Devil Face box?
Or maybe the minis are for the boardgame?
Minis are for the board game. And hey. When you have something that good at exteminating adventurers why not re-use it? I did wonder about that too. I assume that its going to either be some sort of new use for an old trick. Or its just a callback to the original module. In the board game these things tend to be random encountered so this new one is likely killable? Wont know till its out or more details surface.
Quote from: CRKrueger;966593How many are going to buy the dice set just for the Green Devil Face box?
Ok, it's pretty cool in a yes-I'm-that-big-a-nerd sort of way but will I really buy...
Quote from: CRKrueger;966593Supposedly the minis are going to be some of the Classic Tomb things, like the 4-armed gargoyle and the rolling juggernaut.
MUST HAVE MUST HAVE MUST HAVE
Quote from: Just Another Snake Cult;966588Please, please. please let Tomb of Annihilation be as fucking awesome as it sounds and not just another typical overwritten, written-to-be-read-and-not-played, modern big-company module.
That descrpition doesn't match any of the WoTC 5e hardcover adventures, good (CoS and Out of the Abyss) or bad (Tyranny of the Dragon, uninspired but still lots of useable parts).
Quote from: Voros;966598That descrpition doesn't match any of the WoTC 5e hardcover adventures, good (CoS and Out of the Abyss) or bad (Tyranny of the Dragon, uninspired but still lots of useable parts).
WoTC stuff is often bad, but it doesn't really resemble written-to-be-read-not-played Paizo stuff.
I'm not too interested in the Tomb, but the Xanathar's Guide has me. I certainly don't want new crunch books every month, but I think 5e could do with a little more. Hopefully all of the playtesting went well. I confess, I haven't been following it.
Quote from: HappyDaze;966645Hopefully all of the playtesting went well. I confess, I haven't been following it.
Its been a little bumpy here and there. Especially the Artificer and Ranger. But otherwise nothing super broken. Even the psionics stuff works overall.
From the last playtest 5e psionics seems to be a mashup of 2e and 3e psionics. I prefer 2e psionics over the too-close-to-magic 3e psionics but I can live with it.
I thought I read though that psionics won't be in this book, they want to keep tweaking it.
If I read things right, looks like a release of a product each month or so.
JUNE -- Dice in funky box (why they give four d6's and only one d20 is beyond me -- AL doesn't allow for rolling stats but all 5E uses the advantage mechanic)
JULY -- Minis
AUGUST -- Board game
SEPTEMBER -- Hardback module
OCTOBER -- Betrayal at Baldur's Gate (Avalon Hill game; reskinning of Betrayal of House on the Hill)
NOVEMBER -- Xanathar's Guide
I'm still out, I'm sure a copy will come my way but I'm not looking for more adventures or class expansion and I'm not likely to run a 5e game anytime soon. I am open to change my mind if both contain some good setting material, particularly the adventure but given my annoyance that we have acerak in FR it would need to be amazing.
Can anyone come up with a strategy to get Wizards to produce PDFs of their books. It's driving me nuts that they don't do this.
Quote from: PencilBoy99;966679Can anyone come up with a strategy to get Wizards to produce PDFs of their books. It's driving me nuts that they don't do this.
Yes! Official copies would be preferable to me to.
Well, WoTC is certainly getting smarter about its peripheral products.
Has anyone read ToA yet?
I'm starting to see it on store shelves.
Quote from: Voros;966598That descrpition doesn't match any of the WoTC 5e hardcover adventures, good (CoS and Out of the Abyss) or bad (Tyranny of the Dragon, uninspired but still lots of useable parts).
Out of the Abyss is good? I'm finding it just about unplayable by the end. It covers the same levels as Tyranny, but in half the page count, so the DM has to fill in many, many blank spots.
Do you know somewhere where someone has filled in the 200 or so pages that's needed, especially when the players are going back into the Abyss?
People complain about adventures being overwritten then complain that they're too sketchy. Many classic modules, The Lost City, Isle of Dread, Dwellers of the Forbidden City and the final section of Night's Dark Terror are similarly 'sketchy.' Do people need the writers to do every single thing for them?
Quote from: Just Another Snake Cult;994113Has anyone read ToA yet?
I'm starting to see it on store shelves.
Mine is in the mail due to arrive any day.
I've not really been gripped by the campaigns really (I prefer to make my own campaigns, preferably anyway), but I'll get the Guide book. I'm happy with the way D&D is supported currently.
Quote from: Voros;994134People complain about adventures being overwritten then complain that they're too sketchy. Many classic modules, The Lost City, Isle of Dread, Dwellers of the Forbidden City and the final section of Night's Dark Terror are similarly 'sketchy.' Do people need the writers to do every single thing for them?
And, of course, the truly execrable Temple of Elemental Evil was never completed before publication.
Nevertheless, if I buy something published as an adventure for levels x to y and then discover I have to create a chunk of that -
a la the truly execrable and horribly overrated
Temple of Elemental Evil - then I feel ripped off. However, if I buy something that specifically states, like a Savage World plot points campaign, that it is not a fully written adventure then I do not mind. I just like to get what I paid for.
Quote from: Voros;994134People complain about adventures being overwritten then complain that they're too sketchy. Many classic modules, The Lost City, Isle of Dread, Dwellers of the Forbidden City and the final section of Night's Dark Terror are similarly 'sketchy.' Do people need the writers to do every single thing for them?
There's no one 'right.' Some people want a module to be a series of maps and maybe a legend saying how many of what monsters are in room A3. Others feel that if they're going to bother paying cash money for an adventure, then by golly it should be an adventure in a can, so to speak.
Quote from: Scrivener of Doom;994213I just like to get what I paid for.
I feel that they've never been good about that (WotC or TSR, don't know about other companies). This new module is exactly what you need, regardless of what you need.
My group has gotten a copy of the book and one of us is running the rest of us through it. Pretty much what we expected-resurrected people are starting to weaken and die. Rich patron hires party to go to Chult and look for the macguffin. We get there, interact with a bunch of potential guides (some of whom are better than others, have their own motivations, etc.), and are now headed to a huge-but-reasonable-sized area that we think it is located in (i.e. we got a break, and that limited the field of investigation down to a manageable portion, instead of the whole island which is much more 'you will not find it in time'). The one thing our DM has said out-of-game is that our break was in fact lucky, and that it seems to him quite reasonable, in fact probable (given the %ages and # of options, that most parties who go through it will end up on one of the bunny trails and/or randomly poking through the jungle or following plot hooks well past the point where either your patron dies or some outside force intervenes (maybe an NPC party finds the macguffin). So, in his opinion, the adventure is designed such that the PCs have a significantly less than 50% of truly succeeding even if they do everything right. I'm not sure that that is a bad thing (saving your patron can be kind of a 'stretch goal' or something), but it does seem uncharacteristic of modern adventure design. I'd be interested in hearing what other DMs think once they run it.
I feel like the last several adventures put out by WoC failed badly on my main metric for such materials: the ratio of stuff you use at the table (maps, stats, location descriptions) to stuff you don't use at the table (back stories, metaplots, crappy fiction, regional histories, assorted blibber blubber) was just way, way too small. To me, an adventure module should look like the notes I would prepare myself before running a night's game. Who writes all this shit that clogs up all the hard back adventure tomes they are putting out? So, as cool as it sounds I'm not going to jump until I see evidence they are going to print a useful product.
What books do you mean Lardsdangly?
The description doesn't sound anything like Out of the Abyss or Curse of Strahd.
And your complaint directly contradicts Doom's complaint that they are too sketchy. Which is it, overwritten or sketchy?
Quote from: Voros;994304What books do you mean Lardsdangly?
The description doesn't sound anything like Out of the Abyss or Curse of Strahd.
And your complaint directly contradicts Doom's complaint that they are too sketchy. Which is it, overwritten or sketchy?
So, I take it you did finish it? Can you PM me some hints on how to run the last half of the adventure? In particular, do you have some adventures that go there?
Make it up yourself genius. You need everything handed to you? Are you a Millenial or something?
Just got my copy of ToA today. So far, so good.
One minor quibble: With all the handouts and maps this has, I wish it had been a boxed set rather than a hardcover.
Quote from: Voros;994304What books do you mean Lardsdangly?
The description doesn't sound anything like Out of the Abyss or Curse of Strahd.
And your complaint directly contradicts Doom's complaint that they are too sketchy. Which is it, overwritten or sketchy?
Hoard of the Dragon Queen
Rise of Tiamat
I don't think Straahd is as dense with useable material as you suggest.
That's just the stuff I own (and regret); I've paged through the others and think they look similarly bloated.
Quote from: Larsdangly;994236I feel like the last several adventures put out by WoC failed badly on my main metric for such materials: the ratio of stuff you use at the table (maps, stats, location descriptions) to stuff you don't use at the table (back stories, metaplots, crappy fiction, regional histories, assorted blibber blubber) was just way, way too small. To me, an adventure module should look like the notes I would prepare myself before running a night's game. Who writes all this shit that clogs up all the hard back adventure tomes they are putting out? So, as cool as it sounds I'm not going to jump until I see evidence they are going to print a useful product.
This is largely my experience as well. Some might feel that they are getting more bang for their buck, and that's all good, but I feel like the usable substance is highly diluted in the 5e hardback modules.
Quote from: Larsdangly;994600Hoard of the Dragon Queen
Rise of Tiamat
I don't think Straahd is as dense with useable material as you suggest.
That's just the stuff I own (and regret); I've paged through the others and think they look similarly bloated.
i think those first two books are among the weakest.
You own CoS? I see no bloat there at all, everything is a hook or a sidequest. The writing is straight forward and clear.
Quote from: Madprofessor;994606This is largely my experience as well. Some might feel that they are getting more bang for their buck, and that's all good, but I feel like the usable substance is highly diluted in the 5e hardback modules.
Can you give an example of the ones you've read and or played/run? I think it depends on the book.
I find Hoard of the Dragon and Rise of Tiamat rather middling but there's enough to repurpose that they aren't a complete waste, although I wouldn't recommend a purchase.
Storm King's Thunder doesn't hang together but is full of gameable material, some of it quite good, that can be used piecemeal.
The Elemental Evil adventure is weaker and repetitive, but the Cults seem promising.
CoS and Out of the Abyss I find the best, sandboxy with lots of great NPCs and sidequests. I'm not seeing the excessive background histories others are claiming. I've ran CoS and found it easy to reference and run at the table. Yes it would be better if the maps were all removable but some photocopying handled that. I'd like to run OotB, combining it with elements from Descent into the Depths, Shrine of Kuo-Toa and Vault of the Drow.
Quote from: Larsdangly;994600Hoard of the Dragon Queen
Rise of Tiamat
That's just the stuff I own (and regret); I've paged through the others and think they look similarly bloated.
Hey, those two together are playable as a campaign--granted, some of it's sketchy, but it's not like you're paying $50 to write up the adventures for character levels 9-15 on your own time, which, for some, is considered perfectly reasonably to pay for.
You must dislike Vault of the Drow, Night's Dark Terror, The Lost City, and The Greyhawk boxset too Doom.
Pretty much any old school module or setting.
I rather like the Tyranny of Dragons set. Though Rise of Tiamat feels oddly weaker than Hoard. Hoard is to me the more open of the two in some ways. Allowing the players to approach the problem from many different directions if they so choose. Rise allows you a fair amount of freedom as well. But at the same time feels a bit more constrained. Which actually makes sense considering the scope of the problem.
I think Curse of Strahd is ok. But have not as yet had a chance to play it. But seems fairly open at a glance.
http://dnd.wizards.com/products/tabletop-games/rpg-products/tomb-annihilation
Player handouts in PDF. Scroll to the bottom.
Quote from: dar;994744http://dnd.wizards.com/products/tabletop-games/rpg-products/tomb-annihilation
Player handouts in PDF. Scroll to the bottom.
Thanks! Awesome!
Quote from: CRKrueger;966593How many are going to buy the dice set just for the Green Devil Face box?
...[ATTACH=CONFIG]1665[/ATTACH]
Quote from: Voros;994134People complain about adventures being overwritten then complain that they're too sketchy.
That is a matter of personal taste. You find that some want everything in a book that they buy while others want some blank areas to customize. That is something that stretches throughout the hobby. Something to think about is a product that lets you unpack the bits of it to a level of detail that is to the purchaser's satisfaction.
ToA seems set up like a pretty good sandbox in my opinion. When you add to that all the Adventurer's League and Guild Adept stuff being put out on DM's Guild there's tons of pre-made material out there. On the other hand you can ignore everything in say the Ruins of Mezro Guild Adept book and just make up your own stuff about it. The hardback provides the loose outline for everything in the penninsula and then DM's Guild gives you the option of paying more to flesh stuff out. I think this is an amazing way to publish this stuff.
For instance the main adventure the players can enter the last dungeon starting at a recommendation of level 9. If you want to go to level 20 they'll likely be long done with the adventure (especially since there is likely a 78 day time limit if the players give a single wet fart about their patron). Ruins of Hisari lets you continue on with the Yuan-ti storyline through level 16 and Ruins of Mezro lets you go level 1-20 just on the Mezro/Artus Cimber storlyine.
I think that Storm King's Thunder and Out of the Abyss could really have benefited from the Guild Adept program.
Quote from: Just Another Snake Cult;994595Just got my copy of ToA today. So far, so good.
One minor quibble: With all the handouts and maps this has, I wish it had been a boxed set rather than a hardcover.
Boxed sets are very expensive to produce. You normally only see them for starter sets, as the quantity produced somewhat mitigates the lower profit margin.
The third major reason TSR went belly up after novel returns from Random House, & Dragon Dice/Spellfire being very stupid biz decisions, was boxed sets.
Quote from: Voros;994719You must dislike Vault of the Drow, Night's Dark Terror, The Lost City, and The Greyhawk boxset too Doom.
Pretty much any old school module or setting.
Uh, no? At least the ones that claim to be adventures. You sure are hostile.
So you haven't know any of the classics I named as apparently you don't know which are adventures? Got'cha.
As to my 'hostility' it is more a low tolerance for bullshit. The books are either sketchy or overwritten, they can't be both.
I went back and looked at CoS and don't know what Lardsdangly means by overwritten, each Keyed description is a few hundred words, topping out at 500 on average. Background on Barovia takes up a whopping ten pages out of 216.
I haven't ran Out of the Abyss yet but if I felt something was missing I'd just make it up or steal something from Vault of the Drow, Kingdom of the Ghouls or The Night Below.
If you think OotA is sketchy you must be really lost with an OSR product like Scenic Dunnsmouth, Yoon-Suin, Red Tide and Fever Dreaming Marlinko.
I believe there are also tax reasons in certain countries to keep things in book instead of box format.
Yeah I've heard that, box sets don't count as books for tax purposes and apparently the shipping costs are significantly higher as well. Plus box sets are much more likely to get damaged in shipping.
Quote from: Voros;995017As to my 'hostility' it is more a low tolerance for bullshit.
I haven't ran Out of the Abyss yet but if I felt something was missing I'd just make it up or steal something from Vault of the Drow, Kingdom of the Ghouls or The Night Below.
Saying a product is good because you can go steal something from another product to fill the vacancies is simply retarded.
QuoteIf you think OotA is sketchy you must be really lost with an OSR product like Scenic Dunnsmouth, Yoon-Suin, Red Tide and Fever Dreaming Marlinko.
Pointing at something else as worse doesn't address why OotA as great.
QuoteI haven't ran Out of the Abyss yet but if I felt something was missing I'd just make it up or steal something from Vault of the Drow, Kingdom of the Ghouls or The Night Below.
Wait. You haven't even played it, and you become an angry twat about someone asking why you think it's good?
Talk about bullshit...
I guess I can rattle off old adventures, and unlike you just admitted, I actually have played them. In Search of the Unknown is a complete adventure, and doesn't claim to cover more than it actually does. The Enemy Within Campaign has actual adventures all through it...and at no point does it say "hey, sucker, fill in the last 200 pages yourself." Against the Giants, even taken as three modules together...still does what is says it does. Hell, even Phandelver did all it said it'd do.
I just don't understand why you praise fraud, and use ignorance as justification for praise. But, to each his own.
Good day.
It looks promising, even with hex crawl potential and a blank map version for those who wanna take Chult in different directions. It'll mostly be AL relevant about druids wanting dinosaurs, but there's a surprising chunk of usable sandboxing material in there. However, these are just first impressions after an hour browse. Proof will be a few months from now when playthroughs come in.
Quote from: Doom;995140Saying a product is good because you can go steal something from another product to fill the vacancies is simply retarded.
Pointing at something else as worse doesn't address why OotA as great.
Wait. You haven't even played it, and you become an angry twat about someone asking why you think it's good?
If you think Yoon-Suin and my other examples are presented as something 'worse' your head is stuck so far up your ass you'll never see daylight.
My point, obvious to anyone not semi-literate, is that all those classic adventures and very fine OSR adventures are far more 'sketchy' than Out of the Abyss.
I never denied that there are some parts of OotA left for you to fill in, I just don't think it matters because adventures are toolboxes for you to use not a full-stop replacement for your own imagination.
You are the 'snowflake' here complaining like some RPGNet pedant that 'the product' needs to have everything laid out on a silver platter for you.
Quote from: Voros;995017As to my 'hostility' it is more a low tolerance for bullshit. The books are either sketchy or overwritten, they can't be both.
Why can't they be sketchy to some people and overblown to others?
By that logic since everything is subjective why bother discussing it?
If someone thinks a few hundred words per key description is 'overwritten' they want a list not an adventure supplement.
'Sketchy' is obviously more subjective, I don't expect every detail to be explicated in an supplement, particularly when it is sandboxy. By defintion a sandbox is going to have areas that need to be filled in by the DM. One can take issue with the approach but it is a bit like complaining an apple isn't an orange. If they did detail everything the way Doom apparently needs or else he is lost then it would be accused of being overwritten and railroady.
I suspect a lot of the contradictory claims you see online are because most of the critics haven't actually read or played the games and are just spewing the same complaints they assume have been true since 2e or WoTC took over D&D because they feel like shitting on 5e or WoTC makes them hip. In Doom's particular case it seems it is because he is imaginatively stunted.
Okay update time.
My group has had quite a blast with it. It has a decided pre-made sandbox feel to it. Or at least there's lots of stuff on the island that is in now way there to 'serve the plot of the quest.' Our party took a detour that absolutely gives us nothing but xp and treasure we probably won't be able to carry through the jungle. We ended up in an abandoned mine, complete with rickity mine carts with brakes that fail that send you on mad spirals down to who-knows-what and is it better to leap out or crouch and brace for impact, and oh this passage is free of kobolds, let's stop here (finds out why there are no kobolds). And oh, the kobolds are in awe of the dragon at the bottom, but will they ally with you and together you can take the dragon and its' treasure, or is it a trap? Some decidedly in-my-mind old school pointless fun in the middle of a semi-grand quest.
Worst part was arriving at the island and the amount of 'players decisions affect how close they get to the goal' was limited to choosing of your guide. Best part is that the 'goal,' is not the only part of the island that is interesting and you do not in any way feel railroaded.
Jungle survival is fun as well. We have a druid, a druid-barbarian, a wood-elf rogue, and a half-orc fighter (me). All of us are trained in survival. We're well prepared with rain-catchers, insect repellant, antitoxins, disease cures, the druids are memorizing food and water creating spells and so on. The only foolish decision we are making is that my fighter is still wearing half plate, but I'm doing that deliberately (modeling the conquistadors like de Soto who came to the jungles of Florida with full 16th century armor and very quickly found out how foolish that was) and fully expect to end up in less (he has a set of studded that he wore on the boat). Still, it is absolutely reckless to even go into this jungle, and we are having a grand old time threading the needle between 'playing smart' and the fact that playing smart would really mean either not going in at all or going in with a troop of 20-30 experienced jungle experts.
Tentative thumbs up.
Quote from: Voros;995184If you think Yoon-Suin and my other examples are presented as something 'worse' your head is stuck so far up your ass you'll never see daylight.
My point, obvious to anyone not semi-literate, is that all those classic adventures and very fine OSR adventures are far more 'sketchy' than Out of the Abyss.
I never denied that there are some parts of OotA left for you to fill in, I just don't think it matters because adventures are toolboxes for you to use not a full-stop replacement for your own imagination.
You are the 'snowflake' here complaining like some RPGNet pedant that 'the product' needs to have everything laid out on a silver platter for you.
Some people like filling in blanks, so having blanks can be a positive rather than a negative. Depends on the presentation IMO. Sometimes a module blindsides me with a blank, like a room that probably should have had a description.
I wonder if there's a double-standard even among old-school gamers, where if an old-school or OSR product has 'blanks' in it, that's considered a feature, and if a WoTC product has blanks in it, that's a bug.
Also, I can see how that argument could theoretically also be correct.
Quote from: RPGPundit;996553I wonder if there's a double-standard even among old-school gamers, where if an old-school or OSR product has 'blanks' in it, that's considered a feature, and if a WoTC product has blanks in it, that's a bug.
Also, I can see how that argument could theoretically also be correct.
I think it has more to do with how WOTC hosed their own rep with gamers and how it still hasnt quite recovered fully.
Quote from: Willie the Duck;995662...
Tentative thumbs up.
Got my copy yesterday. Probably the strongest old school or OSR influenced WoTC release so far. I've heard the ToH comparisons but Dwellers of the Forbidden City is an even stronger influence I think, not a surprise of course since it is listed as inspiration and an entire section is named after it!
Quote from: Voros;996753Got my copy yesterday. Probably the strongest old school or OSR influenced WoTC release so far. I've heard the ToH comparisons but Dwellers of the Forbidden City is an even stronger influence I think, not a surprise of course since it is listed as inspiration and an entire section is named after it!
It's hard to say. I feel that
ToH is better as a historical and cultural milestone for D&D (for good and ill) than it is actually particularly important or groundbreaking as an actual module. So yeah, I think of this as much more a
Dwellers of the Forbidden City spiritual successor. 'OSR influenced' is such a tough nut to crack. SKT too was definitely a sandbox (whether it was good at it is up for debate. It's about 50:50 hit-or-miss in my circles), so that part of old school started being met. This one has a stronger 'old-school style adventure' feel to it, but I wonder if that's just because it is a subject matter that hasn't been famously tread in a long time (to explain: although Giants-themed adventures are definitely old school, they're also 2e, 3e, and probably 4e, yet I don't remember a famous jungle-themed adventure since the early-mid 80s). I'm playing again tomorrow. It'll be interesting to see how I feel about it as we go through it.
Quote from: Willie the Duck;996804SKT too was definitely a sandbox (whether it was good at it is up for debate. It's about 50:50 hit-or-miss in my circles)
The scope was far too big. The Forgotten Realms has ridiculous distances between everything and the module has you covering pretty much the entire breadth of the Sword Coast. It almost feels like it'd run better as a multi-party sandbox where each group is working on its own part of the puzzle.
ToA by comparison has a much tighter geographic and plot focus without any of the railroading that can plague published adventures.
That's a good point.
As much as my instinct is "this is too big," what I mean is, "this island is too big and too dangerous to be exploring on a short time limit with a reasonable chance of success, unless my DM is wrong about how lucky we were." Overall, it is nice and contained (in a way that doesn't feel like a railroad. 'your goal is somewhere in this geographically defined area').
I'm not clear, they might have shrunk Chuult from other editions (or this is a subsection thereof). But since there aren't too many people who are personally too invested in Chult (like some are for the Sword Coast), I imagine they could change the size and people wouldn't be up in arms.
It is a sub-section of the Chult peninsula. I actually like the Terra Incognita assumptions, both on those hex map alternates, and the cut-off scale from the rest of the Faerûn map. Sometimes tighter is more, for dropping it into other settings, and also just for giving that isolated, claustrophobic feeling from the rest of that weird Sword Coast modern hegemony (Lord Neverwinter's massive domain feels weird to me still).